Some folks like to sing and dance, “Perception is reality!”
Others, often less musical, say, “Hey Flowers, facts don’t care about your feelings. Reality is reality.”
Who has it right?
The answer might be in your refrigerator…
When you pop open the door, a light blinks on.
Actuated by a mechanical switch, the bulb that brightens your butter is only bright when the door is open.
Right?
Is your lettuce lamp on or off right now?
Sometimes switches break. If your fridge flood was lit when the door was sealed, how would you know?
We need to crack the door to see if the beam is burning or black.
Swinging the door moves the switch, which may bump the light, on or off.
We can’t check without changing things.
This is what science people like to call the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
(Awesome name, btw. It sounds way better than saying “we have no idea what’s going on.”)
Best we can tell, the very act of measuring a physical reality causes that reality to change.
And by “we” I mean this cool guy at MIT.
Professor Adams uses just a few boxes and four simple experiments to make his point.
The results?
Logic cracks like a Stone Table…
Following “the rules?” Apparently, Quantum Mechanics didn’t get the memo…
Electrons are doing everything except what they’re supposed to do.
Protons are everywhere except where they’re supposed to be.
Everything is anything – until we try to define it. Then things becomes relatively real.
i.e. A thing defines itself relative to the way we approached it.
I call it the Theory of Specific Relativity…
Right now, if you’re like me, your brain is white-knuckling the lap bar on this roller coaster of thought.
Some of you, brighter than me, have always known this.
Only a brightly burning heart can know something this big…
“Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your being. When your eye is good, you are filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole being is filled with darkness.”
The way we look at something changes what a thing is, in a way.
Phew, the ride’s almost over. We’re nearly back to where we started…
Perception or Fact?
Subjective or Objective?
Color or B&W?
Music or Math?
Heart or Mind?
Which one defines “reality?”
The way you ask the question might change the way you are answered.